Mental Mastery

By definition - the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.

There is a quote out there that goes:

“Vulnerability isn’t our biggest weakness, it’s our best measure of courage”

To me, it means to open up and allow what is to be what is. To me, it is the time when you are the most susceptible to pain but the most available to growth.

Being vulnerable isn’t the easiest thing to do but it is one of the necessary pieces to grow to where we, ultimately, want to be.

To open yourself to the vulnerability you must understand how to help others be vulnerable.

noun

• 1.
  the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

• 2.
  the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.
  
  

What is Resilience? How do you define resilience? It may mean something a little different to everyone. 

To me, it means whatever durability you have earned over the years through our experience of wins and losses. There are few things that are guaranteed in life but one thing you can count on is the opportunity to earn resilience.

When we have a situation that doesn’t work out or goes against what we thought we deserve, we see that as a setback. I want to help you reframe that. We need to teach ourselves to see that as an opportunity to get a little tougher. A little harder. More durable. A little more resilient. 

We cannot avoid the setbacks in life as they are much a part of life as the process of breathing air daily. They will be in your life and be around the corner waiting for you. These are the lessons of life. These are your chances to grow. 

Some of them will hurt more than others. Some are self-inflicted and some are just a circumstance of the situation. No matter the situation, it is a chance for you to grow. 

Resilience is a hard thing to appreciate and understand because it isn’t easy or fun but completely necessary to attain anything you desire to earn. It is unavoidable in life and crucial to your development so find a way to accept it and invite the opportunities. They are key to your success. 

How do you become more patient? Take a breath and be grateful for what you have. THAT will empower you into the gift of more patience….

Patience. What a tricky little thing to get a grasp on much less to understand how it even works or is earned. In theory, this seems simple. Just wait for things to develop and “BAM” there they are, just as you wanted.

No way. No freaking way. That is so far from the actuality of earning patience or being patient. Not to even mention that society isn’t really doing us any favors. Amazon prime, movies on demand, door dash/uber eats, and the list goes on. More now than ever we can have the things we want in almost no time.

Remember in bygone years...Let’s go back there for a moment. You had to order something by submitting an order form and a check (what is that?) for the price plus shipping and handling. Then, and only then, could you wait 6-8 weeks for delivery? That was forever, or so it seemed. 

Were we more patient then? No, we were not so maybe it isn’t a “society” thing. Maybe it’s a human thing. Humans are so perfectly imperfect yet highly trainable and adaptable. Yes, trainable and adaptable. We can learn, develop, and grow. That means that we CAN learn to be more patient. 

I bet you are saying “Duh, why don’t you tell us something actually helpful?”

Is patience really as simple as “Breath in and Breathe out”? No, it is not. It takes practice, repetitions, and losing it to understand how to have it. 

The 3 keys that I use to help me balance it out when I have an opportunity:

1. Does it make me happy?
2. Will it make someone else happy?
3. Will it matter tomorrow?

Now, these are not hard and fast rules but they work when it comes to the point where I need to determine how patient I need to be. 

What is the best way to learn patience? Start with yourself. Are you willing to be patient with yourself? Allow yourself the room to grow, succeed, win, and lose. When you start to become more patient with yourself, you then will start to develop the skills to be more patient with others.

By definition, it is the action or process of making ready or being made ready for use or consideration.

By being prepared for as many possible outcomes the world can offer, when life takes an unexpected turn, you will be ready to handle the tasks at hand. The expectation is a tricky concept. You might expect something to go well and it comes crashing down, or vice versa. There is a healthy balance in the art of preparation.

Preparation can be the foundation of your future success or the bain of your existence. You really have to look at what preparation truly means, to you, as an individual. We all have our own definitions based on the way we were raised, our personalities, and our priorities. 

Ben Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”. I cannot come up with a more valid and powerful statement to express the control preparation, or lack thereof can have on our lives

Preparation can help with so many issues that many people do not see. Anxiety, fear, stress, poor sleep, and mental fatigue. Preparation requires planning and prioritization of goals and desires. Often times, things like anxiety and fear can come from a subconscious awareness that we might not be as ready, or prepared, as we should be. That, in turn, feeds into self-confidence and the “I am not good enough” monster. This is a road you want to avoid as much as possible. 

While preparation isn’t the “magic pill” that will help you overcome your mental struggles, it is a KEY piece to the foundation that you must have. A good foundation is a true base to build your house on.

No one is born without it, however, different life circumstances and challenges cause us to question it and “misplace” it. I would like to repeat, we are all born with it. We never lose it. We just misplace it. It is always there but needs to be built, fed and taken care of. 

Confidence can be earned and built in a myriad of ways. Athletic and business performances, other people’s comments/thoughts of us, our relationships, comfort within ourselves, personal and professional accomplishments and many other ways.

Confidence can also be “taken” away by athletic and business performances, other people’s comments/thoughts of us, our relationships, comfort within ourselves, personal and professional accomplishments and many other ways.

See the opportunity here? What can give us confidence can also be what causes us to misplace it. So how do we balance that out to the more positive side? You MUST make sure that what gives you confidence is self reliant. You MUST remove/tune out the things that you do not have some control of. That is where the true challenge lies.

Confidence can be a fickle little thing but a very powerful tool to truly controlling your life and being your sidekick in kicking ass! 

Now that we have a better acceptance of who we are from a confidence perspective, let’s look at the tools you need to grow and nourish it. 

Let’s look at the Rules of Confidence:

1. Own YOUR confidence
2. 1. No one should ever have control of your confidence
   1. It is something that is as unique to you as your fingerprint
3. Appreciate it
   1. It does not have to be anything big but if you aren’t adding to it, it depreciates
4. Do something daily to build it
   1. It will not always be “topped off” and that’s ok. Just make sure you are making those daily deposits
5. Accept it
   1. It is something that will always be there...or not. Why not take advantage of having it and make sure it is working for you, NOT against you
6. Live with it

Well, we just identified what confidence is, understood the opportunities and pitfalls of it and outlined the Rules of Confidence. That is a great start but how do we actually do anything about it? How do we create a strategy to grow and nourish it so that it is more of a friend than an enemy? It is one thing to understand what’s going on but I want to give you the tools to add to your Mental Toolkit to change and support your habits!

Where to start with the thoughts of my dad and the lessons that I learned from him. We all have a parent or role model in our life that left a lasting impact that we may not have realized in the moment or even within the recent times of those impacts.

My dad was an extremely hard worker. For all of my life I can remember him working in a factory of some sort or a machine shop. From what I knew dad was an extremely talented machinist and also had a work ethic that was second to none. Looking back now I realized that some of my frustration as a young adult with my dad and the perception of his lack of being at certain important events for me was misguided.  As I see it now it was because both of my parents I was able to do the things that I did such as play baseball and go to summer camps. 

My dad would work 6 or 7 days a week and take just about any overtime shift he could get to provide for us so that we could go camping,  have a pool and live on a nice little piece of land.  As I grew older my dad and I grew apart. A lot of it was because he was a stubborn ass old man, or so I thought,  and like most kids, thought I was always right.

To say my relationship with my father was rocky and tumultuous was probably an  understatement. It seemed it was very much an on-again-off-again relationship between the two of us that was built around frustration, lack of patience, misguided anger and a general misunderstanding of each other.

Sadly I did not realize this until the last month of his life when I was able to spend possibly the most quality time I've ever spent with him. On one hand it saddens me that it took me that long to get the fuck over myself and get to know him a little better. On the other hand it makes me happy that I actually had that opportunity.

Looking back now, what is it that my dad really taught me? 

Dad was not always the type to pick you up and give you a hug and tell you he was proud of you,  he was more of a leader than I realized. A lot of the things that I learned from him came from observing and listening not from feeling and experiencing.

In the last month of my Dad's life I learned some of the most important lessons I possibly have ever learned. Not through him telling me but through him showing me.  

I learned about patience due to the process of hospitals and having a very aggressive form of cancer. I learned about compassion as I watched the nursing staff and family take care of him and ultimately he tried to the best of his ability to take care of himself. I learn more about resilience watching him getting stuck with all the needles and ultimately continuing down the path amidst the pain it took.  I learned about always being the captain of your own Ship by watching him make the decision to go home. I told him when he was ready to go home we would get him home. He fought very hard but he finally got to the point where he took control and said enough was enough and that he wanted to be home. It served as a very firm reminder that no matter how bad of a situation you must always be the captain of your own ship

I watched a man who could turn a rusty Bolt with the quick flick of his wrist on the old Jeep Wagoneer that we had, struggling with most basic tasks like removing a lid from a bottle. For me that helps me understand what true strength is.  So another lesson I learned was what true strength is from Dad. 

In life we have the opportunity every single day to learn some type of lesson.  It is not the lessons that we learn,  but it is the way we Implement those lessons into our life that really signifies growth. 

THE LESSON:

We can take any person we know and spin them in a good light and a bad light and it is never my intention to spin people in a bad light.  My dad was not a perfect person, and he and I didn’t have a perfect relationship.  He hid the fact that he was dying from me and my brother.  There’s a lot at play that people don’t know about.

Visualizing is the key to your success!